Silver Linings

These days, more and more, I oscillate between the need for solitude, and the longing for companionship, searching for a place where happiness truly resides. On some days, the silence in a crowded room fills me with an odd tension, a fear, if you like, and I want to fill it up with laughter, with kisses, with the sound of television, with words. On other days, the sound of other voices push against the walls of my invisible bubble, demanding that I listen, interpret, understand. And sometimes, I don’t want to understand. Sometimes, I don’t want to listen. And my castle of happiness, built of the thinnest, brightest cards of glass topples before the winds of life.

I don’t claim to be an unhappy person. I smile at friends, laugh at their jokes, love my family, savour my food, marvel at the beauty the world has to offer and enjoy the everyday platter of joy that makes our one constant, inescapable journey bearable. But sometimes on a bright, carefree day, a sudden thought like a serpent slides in without warning through the tiniest opening into the armoured room, and all the smiles that you had practiced flicker like the dysfunctional lamp on the street corner and the light bleaches out and the joy bleaches out and all you’re left with is the need to escape your own thoughts in the darkness.

I think we can’t really have perfect happiness. Not in the way we want or we long for. Happiness like that, uninterrupted, unencumbered is an anomaly. It unbalances the universe, which must have its share of angst and search to remain meaningful. If our souls did not know discontent, would we ever look to the skies?

Sometimes the colours disappear.
My story-telling mind grows tired of inventions
And silence drips like water
Running down an overworked tap
As I grope around in the blank grayness
To regain my lost fantasies.
And the old fear returns
Of the day I may out-grow
All my wishful fairytales.

(Image taken from https://psychprofessionals.com.au/happiness/ . No copyright infringement or commercial use intended)

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And before you go, here's another piece by me that you might want to check out:

All I Want Is A Room Somewhere